Voice portals are frequently used to answer calls and obtain information from callers. For example, businesses often use voice portals that include interactive voice response (IVR) units to interact with callers and to obtain information from the callers. The IVR systems also are used by businesses to make outgoing calls to customers and/or potential customers. For large businesses, call inbound and outbound call traffic can be quite high, and IVR systems for such high traffic volumes operate to handle calls through a large number of ports or line connections. Management of the call traffic through numerous, but a limited number of, ports, however, raises a variety of issues, particularly where the IVR system handles both in-bound and out-bound calls.
Although a business may be interested in utilizing an IVR system for outbound calls, typically inbound calls, representing customer-initiated calls, are considered a more significant priority, in order to satisfy customer service expectations for customers. Thus, although outbound calls are made on IVR ports unused for inbound calls, generally not all available ports are utilized, thereby leaving ports available to handle inbound calls.